Michel Bauwens (Commons Transition) In Relation To The Venus Project

In general, don’t apply The Venus Project, or Resource Based Economy tags to Michel Bauwens’ tweets, as it may cause confusion.

There is a strong chance that P2P Foundation, and Michel Bauwens do not support The Venus Project, and think a Resource Based Economy is not possible. They think that the concept of no government is not possible, rather a technocracy (style government) is the likely outcome if a Resource Based Economy were implemented.”

Technocratic: relating to or characterized by the government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts. [google definition 2017, and similar to wiki]

The above comment by Michel Bauwens seems to imply that a Resource Based Economy as proposed by The Venus project uses a Technocracy type of government, which is false, as a Resource Based Economy has no government. One can only assume that Michel Bauwens does not really take much notice of The Venus Project, and probably does not really understand it correctly. However he has taken the time to make an article about it, that’s close to 10 years old now!”

In this case Michel Bauwens suggest a strike, and Gharr counters with automation through drones, and getting rid of the workers. The customers still order and get their products, so a strike achieves nothing, and people still go about their business, and interestingly no leader exist before or now, and the boss is still an algorithm. Perhaps Michel Bauwens is unable to see a world where governments might not exist.

Michel Bauwens from “Cut the bullshit: organizations with no hierarchy don’t exist” to “The Future of Governance is not Governments,” shows a person whose ticking all the right boxes, seems to be contradictory, but at least popular to all. Considering he probably thinks the “Resource Based Economy as proposed by The Venus project uses a Technocracy type of government,” and his article about The Venus Project that’s around 10 years old doesn’t put The Venus project in good light; one can easily suggest, that this person is not a supporter of The Venus Project; and by implication, neither does the The P2P Foundation support The Venus Project, since Michel Bauwens is the founder: http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Founders

“Michel Bauwens is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives“

The information package produced by Michel Bauwens and the Commons-Based, P2P Society transitions groups does not provide an easy to read solution (if a solution to the world’s major problems is actually addressed at all in a direct way): https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Main_Page and that may be due to the fact that the aim of the organization is to interface with governments, and solve short term problems within a framework of possible future outcomes.

The policy documents and interfacing with a government, don’t necessarily allow the Commons-Based, P2P Society transitions groups to show a solution to our world’s problems and what our future would be like (although they might politically object to that statement). The Commons-Based, P2P Society transitions groups appear to have open to them several paths to various solutions, that can depend on what happens in the future. Without a solution, it will remain in the domain of The Venus Project, and individuals projects (that also support The Venus Project) to share information about a solution, and help out with any #transition tasks.

Michel Bauwens is quite active on the social networks, and posts tweets with links that contain a considerable amount of information. Some of that information is quit interesting.

Michel Bauwens does know of Jeremy Rifkin. He also introduces another person who called Paul Mason who graduated as a music teacher, but then became a journalist, who eventually becoming an economics editor in 2014.

Capitalism is failing, and it’s time to panic – Paul Mason

The Venus Project does not mention this person.

Netarchical Capitalism: ownership, development and control of participatory platforms.

Of interest, is that Michel Bauwens says that both Jeremy Rifkin and Paul Mason fail to mention that “netarchical capitalism uses this process to organize a more parasitical form of capitalism, in which capital no longer organizes production, but facilitates P2P exchanges;” and this continue to create the monetary system of artificial scarcity and strain on resources and our environment and people’s lives.

“In the hands of the 1%, the technological promise will become a nightmare, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can work together to distribute its benefits fairly.”

This is the idea the 1% or whatever small group that holds the vast majority of money and thus a say on how this world works will ultimately greatly reduce the benefits from having a society that has products and services for near zero-cost. However with the right type of government, and business support (possibly the lobby element) the near zero-cost of services and products can be fully realized.

“Netarchical capitalism is a hypothesis about the emergence of a new segment of the capitalist class (the owners of financial or other capital), which is no longer dependent on the ownership of intellectual property rights (hypothesis of cognitive capitalism), nor on the control of the media vectors (hypothesis of MacKenzie Wark in his book The Hacker’s Manifesto), but rather on the development and control of participatory platforms.” ~ http://p2pfoundation.net/Netarchical_Capitalism

This concept of Netarchical Capitalism seems to be precise in mentioning that government or business will control communications networks.

however it is quite likely that government or business will also have some control of materials extraction, and the refinement of some of those materials for example—and these will also still use a monetary system in Jeremy Rifkin predictions of future trends.

Paul Mason does report on things also, and that might mislead people as to his position on various topics such as military production and the need for conflict, versus public opinion ~ https://youtu.be/RNL07m01KiQ. Jeremy Rifkin Does not seem to go into military spending from taxes because if a huge number of people have no money or wages, then there will be a considerably less amount of taxes collected as spending power is greatly reduced—so the way military production occurs will be greatly changed, and probably will not be based on the monetary system, but on a type of forced labor (draft), or the much less reliable voluntary labor—that a military organization would find very hard to tolerate. The Venus Project does not view war, and conflict as a required part of the worlds social interaction and Jeremy Rifkin may also find that there is a greatly reduced amount of conflict and war with his economic predictions.